


Painted Wings and Giant Rings: The Talk

by nafs (nafio)



Series: Painted Wings and Giant Rings [1]
Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-19
Updated: 2009-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:32:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nafio/pseuds/nafs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Spencer Smith gets the Talk not once but twice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painted Wings and Giant Rings: The Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and blame go to whoyouinvent who prodded me to actually write it all down for her, as well as doll_revolution, in_decisions, laniew1, lordwyndaystar, neery, thesamefire and tigs who have all done some cheerleading over the last year and continue to assure me that this isn't as stupid as I sometimes think it is.

When Spencer Smith is twelve years old he gets The Talk not once, but twice.

About a week after he's had what he'd *thought* was the most embarrassing conversation in history with his father, Spencer comes home from school to find his mom sitting at the kitchen table with his favourite snack and a familiar expression of vague discomfort on her face. Really the only reason Spencer sits down is that this is his *mom* and running away won't actually help in the long run.

"Spencer, honey." She begins awkwardly, her hands fidgeting over an old, leather-bound album. "Did you ever wonder why you go to Dr. Stojanovic and the girls don't?"

"It's not some weird sex thing is it?" He demands with suspicion.

His mother's laugh is a little forced. "Not exactly." She opens the album and points to the first picture. "Now that you're old enough to understand, there's something you need to see..."

# # # #

For once it's easy to suppress the flash of guilty pleasure that usually comes when Ryan slides open his bedroom window. Spencer really has no desire to see his best friend.

"Hey Spence." Ryan greets him, climbing over the windowsill with no stealth whatsoever. "What's up?"

The idea of lying crosses his mind for a second before he shakes it off, horrified. Ryan and Spencer had sworn a blood oath at the age of nine and eight not to keep secrets. Just because Spencer's blood is a little weird doesn't make it any less of an oath.

Also, Spencer's head was under his pillow when Ryan entered the room. Even Ryan could take that as meaning that something was wrong.

"I'm a freak." He declares miserably.

"I knew that already," Ryan says, poking at him. "What the fuck, Spence, shove over and give me some room."

"You are a skinny ass mutant, Ross. There's always tons of room when you're around." Spencer makes room on his bed anyway. It's habit.

"Fuck you, Smith." Ryan sprawls out next to him. Spencer notices idly that there's a small bruise forming on Ryan's left wrist. He carefully looks somewhere else. "Were you trying to kill yourself with a pillow when I came in?"

"No." Little white lies are fine.

"All right, so you won't mind if I have a look at this!" Too late, Spencer realizes that the album his mom had given him is no longer safely under his pillow. He's closer, but Ryan's faster. Spencer lunges for it, but Ryan goes limp and lets himself fall off the side of the bed.

"Ow." He rolls into a sitting position. "Jeez, Spence, look what you made me do."

"Serves you right, dumbass!" Spencer refuses to look. Ryan is fine.

"Spence?" And that tone of voice isn't inspiring Spencer to look either. "Are there *dragons* in this picture?"

 

There are, in fact, dragons in the photograph Ryan is looking at. Two silver-furred dragons surrounded by humans, in what is clearly a multi-generational family portrait. It doesn't seem any more real to Spencer now than it had when his mother showed it to him that afternoon.

Weird as it is, the awe lurking in Ryan's eyes makes him feel a little bit better. Spencer hangs over the edge of the bed and points at one of the youngest family members, a girl not much older than Spencer and Ryan. "That's my grandmother." He takes a deep breath and moves his finger over to the pair of dragons. "Those are my great-great-great grandparents."

Spencer turns the page, to a portrait of two elderly people. "Same people." He huffs out a laugh. "At least that's what my mom says."

"Spence..." Ryan puts a hand on his arm. "Are you... can you..." For once, Ryan Ross is speechless and almost *flailing*. "Spence, are you telling me you can *fly*?"

Spencer stares at him. In the few hours since his mother dropped her bombshell, Spencer hasn't even stopped to consider that part of it. There had been too much about genetics and family legend and needing to be very careful who he dated, as if any of the girls at school were ever going to be even vaguely interested in him. He hasn't even considered that there might actually be something cool in the whole deal.

"Fuck." He breathes. "Yes! I mean," he sits up on the bed. "Not yet. Not till I'm twenty-five. But I will."

"That." Ryan proclaims, climbing back onto the bed. "Is awesome. Tell me everything."

Spencer's mom had only given him the Cliff Notes version. "I don't know much yet. I guess it's all in the book?" Ryan eyes the old album like he's thinking of haring off to read it until he's got it memorized. "But Mom told me some stuff."

Dragons, Spencer's mom had explained, are actually called Chiropteri. They aren't lizards, but mammals, with fur and leathery wings. "Obviously," Ryan murmurs, stroking the picture again. They're born as humans and look like humans until their bodies are fully matured, usually around age twenty-five. "That's an entire lifetime away!"

"That's when it gets weird." Spencer shakes his head. "Er. Weirder."

"Are you going to have to go into seclusion until you learn how to master your transformation?" Ryan wants to know. Spencer gives him his best "I am not impressed with your five dollar words, Ross" face. "Well?"

"No, I am not going into *seclusion*." Spencer mocks. Ryan sticks out his tongue. "It happens once a month at first."

"Like a werewolf?"

"I guess. Except at the new moon instead of the full. You learn how to control it later." *That* part Spencer is definitely not interested in discussing with Ryan. Possibly ever.

"So..." Ryan flicks the edge of the album with one finger. "Why the dusty old book?"

That was one of the few questions Spencer had been together enough to ask. "Mom says the gene to... shift or whatever, it doesn't show up in everyone. I guess in my family I'm the first since..." he waves his hand at the book. "Them. They knew that none of their family had it so they wrote down some stuff. In case it turned up again."

"But you're not twenty-five yet."

"Thank you Captain Obvious."

"Shut up. I just mean, well, how does your mom know you've got the right gene?"

"She says I had a bad reaction to the shots they give you when you're a baby, which is, like, a sign? Anyway, I guess that the name of this dragon... chiropteri doctor had been handed down with the book. She took me in for a blood test and... " Spencer shrugs. "I tested positive for freak genes."

"What about the twins?"

"No." Spencer shrugs again, trying to pretend that it isn't a big deal. "Just me."

"Good." Ryan declares, his voice low and fierce, his eyes shining. "I'm glad."

"Good?" Spencer blinks, but whatever Ryan's twisted reasoning, it's clear he means it. "You are so weird, Ross."

"Takes one to know one."

# # # #

It's only about two weeks after Spencer gets the book that he finally has to admit to Ryan what's so embarrassing and icky about controlling the human to chiropteri transformation, which his ancestors (Ryan's term, to keep them from stopping to count "greats") called "Shifting". Ryan's absolutely fascinated by the whole idea and when he needs a distraction from other stuff(which is a little too often) Spencer can often get him to relax by reading parts out loud. Unfortunately there's only so much he can read about the family crest, or the families with long unbroken lines from seventy years ago. Most of the book deals with Shifting, Search and Courting, and of course all of that is the really interesting stuff.

"How long does it take to learn to control Shifting?" Ryan asks, tracing the photograph of Spencer's ancestors in chiropteri form for the millionth time.

"It depends," Spencer hedges. He hasn't read everything yet, but his mom covered some of this when they had the Talk.

"On what, dorkface?"

Spencer sighs and starts to read again, focusing on the book as if his grandfather's copperplate handwriting has somehow become difficult to read.

"Your first Shift will be very disorienting. If you can, try and find a local pride with whom to spend the new moons. The earliest Shift we know of took place at the age of twenty-three..."

Ryan interrupts him with a jab of his very bony elbow. "You've read that part before," he complains. "It's all about what age you might be and who the local prides in the Vegas area are and where to hide if you have to Shift alone. Skip ahead."

Spencer sighs heavily and flips ahead three or four pages. "By your third Shift, you should begin to find enough control that you will be able to hold off transforming for a few hours when necessary. You will find yourself most agitated as a consequence, but as we must continue to tell you, discretion is key. If you cannnot find a local pride and must go through your first shifts alone, you should wait until you have this small amount of control before you begin your Search for your mate."

"Your what?"

Spencer can feel his whole face heating up. "You heard me, asshole." He mutters.

"You have to get *married*?" Ryan demands, pushing himself up on his elbows. "At twenty-*five*? I thought they said you could live to like, a couple hundred years old."

"Uh huh."

"That's *lame*." He continues. "My mom couldn't stand my dad for even ten years, what if you end up with somebody you hate?"

"It's complicated." Spencer lets the sections on Search and Courting flip through his fingers in demonstration. They take up about half the book. "Chemical or genetic or something. But I can't control Shifting without a mate. They say I could die if I don't find somebody in time."

Ryan sits up and hugs his knees, scowling. "I bet there's a loophole, somewhere. There always is."

For some reason Ryan's stubborn denial makes Spencer feel better about the whole thing. "I think I read something about threesomes." He confides.

"No way." Ryan makes "gimme" hands at the book. "Where?"

"Gimme a second, it's not like there's an index!" Spencer pages through, hunting for the mention of triads that he'd noticed a few days ago.

"I bet your mom hasn't read the whole book, dude." Ryan peers over Spencer's shoulder. "There's no way she'd give this to you if she knew it had stuff about *threesomes* in it."

Somehow that makes everything normal again, as if they're flipping through the Playboy they stole from Ryan's dad last summer instead of reading stuff that is supposed to determine Spencer's whole life. After all, twenty-five is years away - there's no point in worrying about some mysterious mate now when Spencer has Ryan real and warm by his side right now.

# # #

Ryan likes knowing that Spencer's a dragon. It's a secret between just the two of them (Spencer's parents don't count) and it's the best secret they have.

There are times that Ryan doesn't think about it very much. After all it's not like Spencer does anything particularly draconic - chiropteric. Dragons are lizards, as Spencer is constantly telling him, chiropteri are mammals. Also, dragons aren't real.

Spencer has always been very real to Ryan. Sometimes he seems like the only real thing in Ryan's world, the anchor that keeps him sane. He doesn't like to think very hard about Spencer changing, shifting into a different form once a month. Doesn't like to contemplate a Spencer who needs someone other than Ryan. Maybe instead of Ryan. After all twenty-five is a long way away. Years.

Other times, Ryan pours over the diary Spencer's last shape-shifting relatives left behind, wanting to learn more, know more, understand the change before it happens. He traces a finger over coloured drawings on the yellowed pages and wonders what markings Spencer will have. If his fur will be as shiny as his hair.

Even to himself, Ryan absolutely denies having had dreams about dragon-Spencer - curling up against his warm, soft flank, with Spencer's tail holding him in place, or sitting between his wings and flying above the city. Spencer's bones would be hollow after all, he probably wouldn't be able to manage the weight of a human.


End file.
